Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of information navigation and, more particularly, to navigating rotationally-dependent datasets in a graphical user interface (GUI) by rotating a physical object.
Description of the Related Art
The presentation of information is a crucial component of business that is often underappreciated. Most software applications present information visually, sometimes supplemented with or alternatively presented as an audio presentation. A variety of graphical user interface (GUI) tools and input devices have been developed to present information and allow a user to manipulate the presentation. For example, conventional interface tools include hot-keys, menus, toolbars, pop-up command lists, mouse clicks, and the like; conventional input devices include a mouse, a keypad, a keyboard, a remote control device, touch screens, and the like. Together, these components facilitate user interaction with the information in an electronic space. However, the majority of existing software tools are limited to navigating a dataset in a logically-linear manner using a conventional input mechanism.
That is, the GUI elements of conventional software tools act in a way that is consistent with a physical reality and a linear logic. For example, selecting the forward-facing or “next” button in a GUI for a digital book displays the next page, which follows a linear numeric sequence. In essence, conventional software tools mimic the user interactions that are performed with a corresponding physical object (i.e., opening the book, closing the book, and turning pages).
While such software tools are sufficient for repeating manual manipulations within an electronic space, they do not fully utilize and interconnect the vast amount of information available. The amount of information contained in a physical book is limited by the number of pages it contains and each page displays two sets of information, one on each side. Additionally, a book typically has a variety of related information (e.g., book reviews, author's notes, essays, etc.) written about it contained in other sources (e.g., literary journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.).
In the electronic space of the GUI taught in U.S. Pat. No. 8,249,132 titled “ROTATIONALLY DEPENDENT INFORMATION IN A THREE DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE”, a digital representation is able to disregard the limitations of its physical counterpart. For example, pages containing author's notes could be dynamically added to the content of a book, exceeding the number of pages in its physical counterpart. Further, three-dimensional rotation of the digital representation of the book can be used to present related information acquired from other sources, which is impossible with a physical book. For example, rotating the front cover of the book towards the user (i.e., perpendicular to the book's spine) could present the user with book review information instead of the expected edge-view of the book's pages.